The First Word Of The Gospel

Good morning. We are spending Advent sheltering in place .

I figure you are looking at this video at a time and in a place that is convenient for you so I am going to ask you to do something before we go any further. Stop this video for a minute and find some paper and something to write with. And find your Bible. I am going to give you some scripture refences as we go along and you can either stop and read the passages then or make a note of them and read them later

We live in a time that could be said to be a time of fear

Seems there is a sort of amorphous fear in our hearts

We hear that we are in prosperous times yet we fear for our economic state

We look at the news and have a fear of the unknown consequences of current events

We read the news of unrest, discontent and conflict in the world and we fear what could happen if that spills over into our lives

There is some fear of the unknown because of the present political climate

And there is still the ever present fear of COVID -19

There are people who live with specific fears that have specific names

Acrophobia Fear of heights

Venustraphobia Fear of beautiful women

Zoophobia Fear of animals

Phobophobia Fear of phobias

Claustrophobia

Fear of Santa or maybe fear of confined spaces

If you are not afflicted with these or any of dozens of other phobias it seems humorous that someone would be afraid of heights or chickens or spiders or fear itself

If you are one who has some kind of specific fear it is very real

Have you heard of the elf on the shelf?

The powerful spell of the Elf on the Shelf was demonstrated to full effect this week when a 7-year-old New Jersey girl freaked out after knocking her family's elf to the floor. Fearing she had ruined Christmas, she bolted to the phone to call her dad, but wound up calling 911 instead.

Isabelle LaPeruta, of Old Bridge, PA, did not want to leave anything to chance, according to USA Today. As soon as she got through to the emergency controller, however, she tried to explain that she somehow dialed the wrong number.

Isabelle begged not to have the police dispatched, but since they are legally required to investigate emergency calls, it was too late. Her mother awoke from a nap to find Isabelle telling a responding officer that he ought to go home, nothing to see here.

"To her, it was an emergency when she touched the elf, and she's going to ruin Christmas, so that was her emergency," Old Bridge Police Lt. Joseph Mandola [said]. "In her mind, she did right, and it was fine with us."

I wonder who the girl fear most: her dad? The elf? or the police coming to the house?

During an annual event for Old Bridge firefighters and police officers to drive around town dressed in Christmas costumes, officers made sure to pay Isabelle a special visit from Santa to prove the laws of Christmas weren't violated. https://www.phillyvoice.com/nj-girl-knocks-over-elf-shelf-dials-911-panic/

Jews in New Testament time in Palestine had plenty to fear

Rome might suddenly increase its oppression and impose severe power against the people

Disease and plague and famine were always just beneath the surface

Indeed there have always been reasons to fear one thing or another at one time or another

You can find things daily to fear or worry about

Today I want to look at three vignettes associated with the birth we celebrate this season

Each of these involves a person or people, an angel and an order to "fear not"

First consider the old priest Zacharias

The account of Zacharias is in Luke 1:5-17

Write that down or find it and read it. I’ll wait

Are you back?

On a certain day Zacharias was on duty in the temple

He was going about his priestly business with one notable exception

He was part of a cadre of priests in the order Abijah

There were twenty-four courses or groups of priests who served a week at a time twice a year in the temple

The rest of the time they lived elsewhere and did priestly functions like help offer sacrifices in their hometown and maybe some minor mediation of disputes and certain health evaluations with regards to ceremonial purity like evaluation of leprosy.

On this particular day it was Zacharias' honor to offer the incense upon the altar of incense in the holy place in the temple

This would be the only time in his life he would be so honored.

Once the lot had fallen to a priest to offer the incense he would never be in the pool again